Live Free or Die Hard
Director: Len Wiseman
Writer: Mark Bomback
Based on: John Carlin‘s article A Farewell to Arms
Sequel to: Die Hard, Die Hard 2, Die Hard: With a Vengeance
Cast: Bruce Willis, Timothy Olyphant, Justin Long, Maggie Q, Cliff Curtis, Kevin Smith, Zeljko Ivanek, Mary Elizabeth Winstead
Plot:
After the FBI has been hacked, John McClane (Bruce Willis) is supposed to bring in Matthew (Justin Long), a suspected hacker. What should be a routine pick-up and drop-off, ends up in a full-blown shoot-out. And suddenly McClane finds himself right in the middle of the biggest hack of the century, trying to avoid the complete dismantling of the financial system.
After I actually liked the third Die Hard movie, I thought that I had finally hit my stride with these films. Unfortunately McClane is totally unhinged in this film, and they liberally peppered the script with misogyny and racism. That is not cool.
It starts with the “daddy McClane feels that he has to defend his daughter Lucy’s (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) honor by completely getting into her business, threatening her date [who did behave like an ass] and generally behaving like a dick” scene. I really wish that people would stop portraying that behavior as the correct behavior for dads. [At least Lucy is pissed off about it. Though later she’s completely ok with everything again and daddy can do no wrong.]
But if they had left it that I could have dealt with it. But the casual sexism and misogyny goes on throughout the entire film. Especially everytime McClane talks about Mai (Maggie Q) it is misogynistic and/or racist and it really was disgusting.
McClane is generally completely off his rocker in this one. Where he was a maybe slightly problematic cop, who was mostly pushed by the circumstances to not give too much about the rules, in this one he just doesn’t give a single damn. Not even the tiniest. The script tries so hard to paint him as a tough hero, that it forgets that a hero who makes the ends count more than the means is on his way to being a villain.
And apart from the content-issues I had, there were way too many shoot-outs and chase scenes for my taste. That shit is boring. Which meant that the entire film was a let-down.
Summarising: Watch only if you’re the world’s biggest McClane fan.
kalafudra's Stuff 
A-bso-lu-tely. Thank you.
Anytime. Btw. I really appreciated your Wonderful Wizard of Oz tweets. Spot-on.
Oh, you’ve seen it? I’m looking forward to reading your post if so!
I have! I’ll post about it, soon.
Though I do believe that I enjoyed it a bit more than you did…
Probably. I rolled my eyes and was about to leave a few times.
I also noticed that my level of tolerance for sexism, racism and homophobia gets lower and lower with the years and that I less ans less enjoy what I feel being problematic contents. ;_;
Oh yes. I notice that about me, too. But sometimes things get lucky and it’s a day where some of my critical receptors are on holidays and I manage to enjoy stuff like I used to when my feminist side wasn’t as explicit: things will bother me a bit, but I manage to ignore them.
I don’t know if that makes any sense…
[…] John Moore Writer: Skip Woods Sequel to: Die Hard, Die Hard 2, Die Hard: With a Vengeance, Live Free or Die Hard Cast: Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch, Yuliya Snigir, Radivoje Bukvic, Mary Elizabeth […]
It makes. :D That’s why I still enjoy Supernatural.
I’m thinking of giving Supernatural another try. Tumblr compels me. Saw the first 6 episodes years ago, but wasn’t convinced…
I started with season 3 or 4 I think and I skipped season 7… To tell the truth, you won’t miss what you don’t watch so skip the boring episodes. :)
I’m a bit obsessive about these things, so I don’t know if I’ll actually manage to skip anything. But maybe it would be the best approach.